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Brown v. Board of Education
On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education in mainly Kansas. It also took place in South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and District of Columbia. It overturn Plessy v Ferguson, 9-0. -
Murder of Emmett Till
In August of 1955, two white men named Roy Bryant and JW Milan, killed Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, for whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. In September 1955 an all-white jury found Bryant and Milan not guilty of Till's murder. This lead to racial violence and injustice prevalent in Mississippi. -
Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks's arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, during which the black citizens of Montgomery refused to ride the city's buses in protest over the bus system's policy of racial segregation. She stood her ground and refused to give up her seat for a white man. Rosa became an instant icon, but her resistance was a natural extension of a lifelong commitment to activism. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is a civil rights organization founded in 1957, as an offshoot of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which successfully staged a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery Alabama's segregated bus system. It was an organization linked to the black churches. The people involved were MLK and the 60 Black Ministers Civil Rights Leaders. -
Little Rock 9
In 1957, 9 African American students arrived at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They made their way through a crowd shouting obscenities and even throwing objects. Once the students reached the front door the National Guard prevented them from entering the school and were forced to go home. -
Greensboro Sit Ins
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American college students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The students refused to leave when they were denied service. This brought the fight for Civil Rights to the national stage